The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport’s spending on civil society has fallen by £315m to £705m, according to its annual accounts.
Last year's accounts showed spending of £1.02bn on civil society, making it the department's second largest area of spending.
DCMS’s accounts were published on Friday afternoon and show that spending on civil society was the third largest area of spending – ahead of sport, £461m and heritage on £570m.
Public broadcasting was the largest spend area with £3.2bn, followed by arts, culture and libraries with £1bn.
The spending on civil society is not broken down in the report, although it includes a spend of £236m on the Office for Civil Society.
There was an £11.6m underspend on the OCS which the report attributes to a £7.8m underspend on National Citizen Service because of a “lower growth in participation numbers than projected and budgeted for”.
There was also a £2.6m underspend on the Social Outcomes Fund because of lower referrals than expected. This fund was launched with the Big Lottery Fund in 2016 as a way to grow payment-by-results mechanisms such as social impact bonds and £20m was available in total.
Projected spending for the OCS shows it is expected to increase to £294m in 2018/19 and to £317m in 2019/20, largely because of an anticipated increase in NCS participants.
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